The heyday of Art Nouveau coincided with the electrification of cities. Compared to gas lighting, electric light was safer, generated hardly any heat and did not consume oxygen. However, the uniformity of electric light was also considered a disadvantage because it was perceived as lifeless and sterile. Electricity therefore offered both the opportunity and the necessity to invent new types of lighting fixtures – a task to which artists also devoted themselves.
The lamp from the small but immensely successful glass factory Lötz Witwe, founded around 1900, serves the practical purpose of providing a room with lighting, but is also a free-standing light sculpture.
The globe is iridescent due to the vaporisation of metal salts. The process was developed by the Hungarian scientist Valentin Leó Pantocsek (1812–1893) to imitate the patina of antique glass and became a speciality of Tiffany in the USA and Lötz at the end of the 19th century.
Franz Pankok, Table Lamp, made by “Glasfabrik Johann Lötz, Witwe”, 1901/1902. Yellow glass, colourless overlay, thread overlays and silver yellow, mould-blown, iridescent; tin casting, soldered, engraved, 8 moonstones. Source: Kunstpalast Düsseldorf
Design is fine. History is mine. 